The Game

He slammed the car door behind him with triumphant, maniacal laughter. He had finally captured his quarry. He had been playing the game for thirty years now and the wall in his game room was virtually covered with trophies. He had been looking forward to mounting this particular trophy for months and now he could barely contain his excitement as he rushed back to his cabin deep in the woods.

He placed his prize on the table and secured it as tightly as possible; the tranquilizer will be wearing off soon and he didn’t want any unpleasant surprises when it did. He had put too much work into this prey and he wasn’t about to let it get away now that he finally had it in his grasp. He took his time laying out his tools as he readied the game room for his favorite part of the game. After thirty years, he had learned a great deal on how to make the game last longer and more enjoyable. His quarry had finally regained consciousness and grunted and struggled against its restraints. He approached the table which he had designed specifically for the game after much trial and error and bent over the thing on the table slowly and deliberately, flashing a grin a mile wide. At first the thing regarded him with confusion and anger. It tried to scream, but could only manage a baleful wale of unintelligible moans.

He had cut its tongue out after he had incapacitated it with his ‘Hot Knife’. He had specifically designed it to cauterize as it cut to minimize blood loss. He had lost too many toys because they had swallowed their tongues or had bled out.

He took a scalpel and, with great care, removed its eyelids with expert precision and tossed them into the incinerator as a mixture of tears and blood streamed from the newly uncovered eyes. Most of his toys would be screaming wildly by now, but this one was strong and was barely even breathing hard; trying its best not to show how much pain it was in. He was okay with that. The whole point of the game was to break the toy and throw it away; and he always broke his toys.

As he began playing the game, he made it a point to show his tools to his toys before using them. He set to work removing first the toe nails and then the finger nails, stopping after each extraction to dab some salt on each pad before moving on to the next. When he was finished, he dropped his pliers in a sterilization tray and discarded the toe and finger nails into the incinerator. Next, he lit a cigarette and proceeded to the next round of the game. He raised the table, maneuvering his toy to an upright position and picked up another tool, a mouth spacer. He opened his toys mouth and examined its contents. He was pleased to see that this toy took care of its teeth. With a smile, he began extracting all of the upper teeth. He had learned that an unconscious reaction to pain is the clenching of jaws. If the top teeth are gone, the bottoms would grind against the splinters and open gashes. He was particularly proud of this discovery. Still this toy wouldn’t scream, wouldn’t break. He was glad because it was rare that he had a toy that was this strong, but he was starting to lose patience because even the strongest of his toys would have been at least whimpering by now.

Two rounds done, he retrieved his Louisville Slugger from the corner and casually hefted it onto his right shoulder. He began pacing back and forth in front of his toy and lit another cigarette. “I don’t normally talk to my toys, you know,” he began, “but I thought I would make an exception in your case.” He took a mighty swing with his bat and broke his toys right femur. The toy shuddered violently for a moment, and regained its composure and continued staring at him. Slightly unsettled he continued, “I bet you don’t remember me, do you? Six months ago, I was picking up a toy and you came and stopped me.” He punctuated that last statement with another crushing blow this time to the left femur, shattering it. The toy barely registered the strike and continued staring at him. He was quickly losing his cool, this toy was not playing along like all the other toys and that constant staring was beginning to make his skin crawl.

Round four started as he lowered the table back to the horizontal position. “The news channels and papers were calling you a hero for weeks!” He extinguished his cigarette on the toys Navy SEAL tattoo on its chest. “Do you want to know my favorite part of this game? THE HERO DIES IN THIS ONE!” He grabbed the opposite ends of the broken left femur and roughly rolled them in opposite directions. The toy’s muscles went rigid, but it still would not yield. No one had ever made it passed round four before. His mental block was rapidly breaking down and had almost acknowledged this toy as another human being. He left the room in a rush, smacking his tool tray and sending the unused tools clattering to the floor. The door stayed open in his wake and the sounds of hurried rummaging flowed into the game room. He re-entered the room and slammed the door behind him. “You may have noticed that there isn’t anything flammable in this room, but you would be wrong.” He doused his toy with gasoline and held a wooden match in its face. “You are quite flammable.” With a demented laugh, he lit the match with his thumbnail and dropped it onto his toy which went up in a ball of flame immediately. The roar of fire couldn’t cover the blood-curdling screams from the toy. Finally, he had won. He took a picture with his Polaroid camera, wrote the date and tacked it up with the rest of his trophies on his wall. He then ran his fingers through his greasy salt-and-pepper hair and lit a cigarette on the dying flames, before walking out of the room. He made a note to tip the maid extra this week.